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She wasn't just predicting conventional oil declines. In her 2007 posts she explicitly considers and rejects the adequacy of unconventional oil sources (Canadia

She wasn't just predicting conventional oil declines. In her 2007 posts she explicitly considers and rejects the adequacy of unconventional oil sources (Canadian oil sands, American shale) to prevent oil from peaking imminently [1]. Most people would like a flying car or a trip to the moon. That's possible. But the technology to offer those to the mass market hasn't been invented! If the only problem with flying cars was that they burned a lot of fuel, millions of high-income people would be flying around in them today. I'm not saying that we can never invent more energy-intensive devices that reach the mass market. But I have observed that nothing like this has reached the mass market in 50 years. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for routine Moon vacations or flying cars. I find that the Jevons paradox is cited more often in online discussions than it is understood. The Jevons paradox can be considered a special case of the energy rebound effect. Energy rebound is the tendency of people to use more of an energy service when that energy service can be supplied more efficiently. For example, replacing incandescent light bulbs with LED light bulbs saves energy, but some of that energy savings is negated if people also install brighter bulbs when they switch from incandescent to LED. The Jevons paradox is the unusual case where the rebound effect is greater than 100% -- like somebody installing 20 new LED lights for every incandescent they replace. It's remarkable enough to get its own named paradox because it is a surprising, rare situation. The far more common case is that energy saving technology really does save net energy, without inducing enough new demand for a 100%+ rebound. [1] Is This a False Alarm? https://ourfiniteworld.com/2007/07/16/is-this-a-false-alarm/ https://ourfiniteworld.com/2007/07/16/is-this-a-false-alarm/

nickik 6y ago
Arguing with the Peak-Resource crowed is beyond pointless. These people have not except basic economic arguments for 200 years, and every 15 years they come up with a new crisis that gone happen in the next 15-20 years. The was a lot of Peak-Coal talk in 1800 Britain as well. Now they seem to have moved on to 'rare' earths (that aren't that actually rare). They always excuse every individual wrong prediction with 'well this factor we couldn't predict and nobody could have' so we were right. No matter that that does not make sense and is exactly the point the other side makes. The Club of Rome and the 'Population Bomb' are some of the most mainstream example. The author of the 'Population Bomb' was often on mainstream TV. The 'Populationbomb' crowed for example wanted limit growth of population in India, and wanted to US government not to trade with them or help them with agriculture. Their logic was that millions were gone die anyway, not helping them might kill them sooner and that will limit growth, much more humane. There is a long history of that thinking. The Club of Rome of course hilariously came back back and said 'we were actually right, juts off by multiple 100%'. Great, thanks guys, I'm defiantly gone listen to you now. People who think in zero sum games will never understand how a non-zero sum game works. These are the most dangerous people in the world. The earth is not threatens by limited resource, but rather people who believe resources are limited. The biggest catastrophes of the modern happened because of people who believed in zero sum games. Even if Jevons paradox were always true, there is no issue with growing energy use for the next couple 100 years, or even couple 1000s. There are plenty of energy sources around. As long as we have energy, food is not an issue either.

nickik 6y ago

Arguing with the Peak-Resource crowed is beyond pointless. These people have not except basic economic arguments for 200 years, and every 15 years they come up with a new crisis that gone happen in the next 15-20 years. The was a lot of Peak-Coal talk in 1800 Britain as well. Now they seem to have moved on to 'rare' earths (that aren't that actually rare). They always excuse every individual wrong prediction with 'well this factor we couldn't predict and nobody could have' so we were right. No matter that that does not make sense and is exactly the point the other side makes. The Club of Rome and the 'Population Bomb' are some of the most mainstream example. The author of the 'Population Bomb' was often on mainstream TV. The 'Populationbomb' crowed for example wanted limit growth of population in India, and wanted to US government not to trade with them or help them with agriculture. Their logic was that millions were gone die anyway, not helping them might kill them sooner and that will limit growth, much more humane. There is a long history of that thinking. The Club of Rome of course hilariously came back back and said 'we were actually right, juts off by multiple 100%'. Great, thanks guys, I'm defiantly gone listen to you now. People who think in zero sum games will never understand how a non-zero sum game works. These are the most dangerous people in the world. The earth is not threatens by limited resource, but rather people who believe resources are limited. The biggest catastrophes of the modern happened because of people who believed in zero sum games. Even if Jevons paradox were always true, there is no issue with growing energy use for the next couple 100 years, or even couple 1000s. There are plenty of energy sources around. As long as we have energy, food is not an issue either.